How to bake a First World War trench cake
During the First World War people in Britain would bake and post a fruit cake to loved
ones on the front line. Some traditional cake ingredients were hard to come by.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...2_2944759b.jpg
There are no eggs in this recipe and vinegar was used to react with the baking soda to
help the cake rise.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...ench-cake.html
Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake
No eggs... but nutmeg, ginger, and lemon - all of which I would have expected to be harder to source during a war than eggs.
Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake
The nutmeg and ginger could have been in cupboards for years....it lasts a long time, and people may have had it prior to the war already. Maybe the lemon was zested and dried and stored? I would have thought the lemon would be the hardest to find......
I wonder how this tastes?
Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake
Quote:
Originally Posted by
HerMajesty
The nutmeg and ginger could have been in cupboards for years....it lasts a long time, and people may have had it prior to the war already. Maybe the lemon was zested and dried and stored? I would have thought the lemon would be the hardest to find......
- Yes I would agree that those would seem a lot more difficult to source. The eggs may have been kept for troops or other... however many of that era may have had chickens in the garden even a small yard, continued from Victorian times... and I think for WWII that you were given egg or chicken feed rations...
Maybe there was a special allowance given out at Christmas to encourage people to make the cake for relatives?
Ingredients 1/2lb flour
4 oz margarine
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/4 pint of milk
3 oz brown sugar
3 oz cleaned currants (cleaned... were they sold dirty or does cleaned mean something else eg deseeded?)
2 teaspoons cocoa (in a fruit cake!)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
nutmeg
ginger
grated lemon rind
Method
Grease a cake tin. Rub margarine into the flour in a basin. Add the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add the soda dissolved in vinegar and milk. Beat well. Turn into the tin. Bake in a moderate oven for about two hours.
Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake
Dried Fruit was always washed before use until very recently.
Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake
Quote:
Originally Posted by
madelaine
Dried Fruit was always washed before use until very recently.
Yes, you are right and I still wash it - old habits dying hard!
As for eggs - that is a puzzle as many working class people were still keeping chickens in the yard well after WWII! I know they were rationed in that second conflict and we met "dried eggs" for the first time, but we had no egg problem anyway. We lived in a mid terrace house with no rear entrance and still kept chickens.
Crazy things happened though. I can remember my mother being very puzzled. We children were told to take a large tin to school one day as a food hamper had arrived from Australia. It was cocoa powder!!! :D